Reader: After LoDo Letout, All the Bros Can Go to Glendale to Drink Until 4!

Mike Dunafon, former mayor of Glendale and husband of Debbie Matthews, owner of Shotgun Willie's, is running for governor as a third-party candidate -- and it might as well be the Party party. Because as a major booster of Glendale's riverwalk project, he and other officials pushed for a 2011 state law that allows municipalities to establish "entertainment districts" that contain "common consumption areas." Glendale then established an entertainment district that includes the new CitySet project as well as Shotgun Willie's. And last month, a new municipal code took effect in Glendale that pushes back the time that bars in this area must stop serving to 4 a.m., two hours later than any other watering hole in the state. So far, Shotgun Willie's is the only place to take advantage of the new rule; it's now charging a $30 cover to get into the venue after 2 a.m, as a CBS 4 report notes.

Whoo-hoo! After let-out downtown, all the bros can head down to Glendale. What could possibly go wrong?

Not to worry, responds WhirledPeasPlease:

I hope more bars in Glendale do this. A 4am bar close time reduces alcohol fueled incidents and accidents because there are fewer drunks on the streets at 2am. Instead people straggle home whenever they are done drinking, very few can keep going until 4am.

A law that would have expanded closing times statewide never made it out of committee last legislative session, but extending bar hours and staggering bar closings has been suggested before as a solution to LoDo letout crowds...and all those bros. What do you think of the Shotgun Willie's move?

Patricia Calhoun co-founded Westword, Denver’s News and Arts weekly, in 1977; she’s been the editor there ever since. She’s a regular on the weekly Colorado Public Television roundtable Colorado Inside Out, the former president of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies -- a post that got her an unexpected interview with former President Bill Clinton in front of a thousand people (while she was in flip-flops) -- and played a real journalist in John Sayles’s Silver City.